It must not be forgotten that they are in the last resort also responsible for the performance of the tremendous giants below, the steam-engines that thrust the vast fabric through the seas at such headlong speed. But, unlike their brethren in the Navy, they do not think lightly of the engineer. They recognize to the full his wonderful ability and trustworthiness, and I think I am well within the mark in saying that no department of the ship's management gives them less anxiety than the most important of all, the engine and boiler-rooms. For it is impossible to conceive of even a second-rate engineer rising to be in command of a liner's engine-room. There is a process of weeding-out in action there that is very efficient, so that while it is conceivable that by a combination of favourable circumstances and highly placed influence a duffer _might_ come to command a fine ship, the same thing could not happen in the engineering department. CHAPTER III. THE MASTER (OF A TRAMP). From the liner to the tramp is by no means the great step that might be imagined. Indeed, so fine are the gradations in the quality and positions of steamships that it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line anywhere. For even among tramp steamers undoubtedly there are many shades of difference until we reach the very lowest class of all, run on principles despised by all ship-owners of repute. The hierarchy of merchant shipping, the great floating palaces belonging to such firms as the P. & O., the Cunard, the White Star, and the British India, to mention only a few, and without any invidious idea of selection, fall easily into a class by themselves, association with which in almost any capacity confers a sort of brevet rank upon a seaman. But once they are left, and the lines entered upon to whom cargo is the one thing needful and passengers are merely incidental, we get a new order of things entirely: first of all, a great reduction of speed, for the sake of economy in running; consequent upon this, a corresponding reduction of staff, both on deck and in the engine-room. Yet in the highest class of cargo carriers and the lowest class of ocean-going passenger ships the master's position is still a proud one. His vessel is often of immense size, carrying up to ten thousand tons of freight, and, especially if she be one of the hand-maidens of a great company owning swift passenger ships as well, his salary will be fairly good, though probably fifty per cent. below that of his more fortunate fellows in the liner pure and simple. Also his work will be increased. For there is no difference at sea in the old axiom that the less a man does the more money he gets for it. Still, where he is in a regular trade, as in the highest class of cargo ships he will be, his clerical work connected with the ship's earnings will be almost _nil_, although he may not carry a purser to do the interior accounts of the ship or such matters as wages bills, etc.